For close to a month now, I’ve been patiently waiting for Indian summer to set in.

I’ve optimistically/delusionally put off closing up the garden in the hopes that some unseasonably warm weather would drop by and bring the masses of tomatoes on my vines to fruition.

But, with the Everyman and I leaving for a week’s vacation at the cottage, it appeared I would have no such luck, so rather than hoping for the best while we were away and potentially losing all of the tomatoes to frost, I sucked it up and stripped the plants bare over the weekend.

You know, being that this is the first year I’ve really thrown myself into any sort of gardening, I can’t say whether this is what it is always like, or whether I just got lucky this year, but we’ve been experiencing some pretty sweet bounty lately.

About a week before we left for Chicago the tomatoes started coming in with increasing regularity. We’re now at the point where I am able to harvest approximately a pint every day. Since I am only growing heirloom varieties they don’t get very big, but we tend to prefer the juicier, sweeter cherry tomatoes anyway. From currant to cherry and all sizes in between, our favorite way to enjoy them has been just plain in a bowl, popping them into our mouths like some weird, veggie popcorn. When we inevitably start tiring of tomatoes then I doctor them into a salad with fresh herbs and balsamic, but that’s pretty much where I draw the line at changing the flavor of these amazing beauties.

All season long I’ve been trying my hand at putting up various fruits and vegetables (jams and pickles) from the farmer’s market too, but today marks the beginning of my most ambitious project to date. I’ve ordered 2 bushels of roma tomatoes from my local organic delivery service which I plan to transform into canned bruschetta, italian-style tomato sauce, whole crushed and oven-roasted tomatoes. Reading through all the recipes I expect that the next 48 hours will be exhausting, but will be so worth it 6 months from now when all that is available are those gross, pinkish winter tomatoes at the supermarket. Then I shall laugh in the faces of the fools who didn’t want to spend the time preserving as I did, while they eat their crappy, grocery store tomatoes shipped in from Mexico. Oh yeah, did I mention I’ll be enjoying delicious, fresh bruschetta in February 2009?

I spent most of yesterday afternoon barbecuing the baker’s dozen of corn cobs I purchased at the market on Thursday. These sweet little niblets of sunshine were shorn from their cobs and individually quick frozen for use later this year. A few of them also made their way into a roasted corn and sweet pepper salsa I made too. The Everyman seemed to really enjoy that with our dinner last night, because you could never quite tell which bites had the chopped up jalapenos in it until it was too late. Perhaps you’d like to try it some time too: